Tag: Refined sugar free

These remind me of those crunchy sesame bars packed with sugar & corn syrup that you find in all of the delis of NYC, but these laddu are much easier on your teeth (they are soft with a slight chewiness) and your blood sugar levels, AND they have the added richness of peanut and cardamom.

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These are really my kind of treat. They remind me of those crunchy sesame bars packed with sugar & corn syrup that you find in all of the delis of NYC, but these laddu are much easier on your teeth (they are soft with a slight chewiness) and your blood sugar levels, AND they have the added richness of peanut and cardamom. I adapted the recipe from Xawaash, a Somali food blog written by a couple who now live in Canada.Their recipes and stories are full of lovely details that convey a deep love for their native country.

I adapted the recipe so that it contains no added sugar and requires no cooking.

Ingredients:

125 g Sesame Seeds, raw

1/2 tspn Ground Cardamom

125 g Roasted Peanut Butter (unsalted)

200 g Medjool Dates, pits removed

Method:

Toast the sesame seeds and cardamom in a small pan over medium heat until golden and fragrant. Let cool. Grind sesame seeds in food processor (pulsing) until they are a fine powder (do not over-grind, or they will become tahini paste!). Remove from food processor and set aside.

Place peanut butter & dates in the food processor and puree until smooth and homogeneous. Add the ground sesame seeds and pulse just until mixed in.

Lay a sheet of plastic wrap on a cutting board. Place the laddu mixture on top and squeeze into a squared ball. Place another sheet of plastic wrap on top, and use a rolling pin to roll the paste into a uniform 1/2-” thickness. Remove the top sheet of plastic wrap and cut into desired shapes. The laddu can also be rolled into balls. My first batch came and went within a single day. Enjoy yours while they last!

Over the course of a recent week, I researched, executed, and adapted recipes from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. I know that I didn’t change the world or relieve anyone’s suffering by baking in my kitchen, but it was important to me to get better acquainted (albeit minimally) with the cultures of these countries, partially through their cuisines. Many of the recipes I referred to I found on blogs written by people who had grown up in one of these countries and emigrated elsewhere. They wrote of their love for their respective native countries and their cuisines, and of their disappointment with the turmoil that grips many of them.

A few of the recipes I tried out adapted easily to my Fruitcake techniques. I’m posting my favorites, starting with Kleicha.

These delicious pastries (most blogs refer to them as “cookies,” but I think it’s more apt to call them pastries) resemble a cross between a cinnamon roll and a rugelach. And amazingly the original recipe doesn’t call for sugar in the first place–only dates–so it was very easy to adapt!

Heat the milk to 105°F-110°F–just warm when you test it with your finger. Do not overheat or the yeast will not survive! Put the milk in a glass measuring cup and add the yeast and a pinch of date sugar (if you have it). Let sit 5-10 minutes until you see some bubbles on top–evidence that the yeast are alive and active (Here is some more info about how yeast works, if you’re interested).

While you wait for the yeast to wake up, use a small saucepan to melt the butter with the vegetable oil. Once it’s hot, add the cardamom and nigella or black sesame seeds and cook for 30 seconds or until fragrant (See here for more info on blooming spices). Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. Measure the flour in the bowl of your stand mixer (have the dough hook attachment ready), and add the yeast/milk mixture and the butter/oil/spice mixture.

Knead with the dough hook (or by hand) for 3-5 minutes. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth or loose plastic wrap and let rest for one hour.

Make the filling:

While the dough rests, make the filling. Again, melt the butter in a small saucepan and once hot, add the spices and heat a moment until fragrant. Remove from heat. Put the pitted dates in your food processor. Add the butter and spices and puree until smooth.

Roll the dough & filling:

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Prepare egg wash: in a small bowl or glass, mix an egg yolk with an equal amount of water. Get a pastry brush out.

Divide the dough into two equal pieces and use a rolling pin to roll the two halves into two rectangles of about 6 in. by 18″ (The dough should be about 1/8 in. thick). Next, remove the filling from the food processor and divide it into two equal portions. Place the first half between two large pieces of plastic wrap and use the rolling pin to roll the filling out into a rectangle the same size as the dough rectangles. Carefully flip the filling onto one of the pieces of dough. Repeat for the second half of the filling.

Roll each rectangle, long edge to long ege. Then cut the rolls into 1/2-in. to 1-in. pieces. Arrange them, spirals facing up, on sheet pans lined with parchment paper. Allow at least an inch of space between each kleicha. Brush the top of each pastry with egg wash. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until lightly golden in color. By then, your kitchen is going to be smelling amazing. Let the kleicha cool, and then enjoy with some tea or coffee!

Okay, I know you’re sick of being bombarded with pumpkin everything, but the fact is Thanksgiving is going to come around and you are going to need a pumpkin pie to serve. And the truth is, you want some for yourself too. By “you,” I mean me. Anyway, I came up with this recipe that is sweetened only with fruit and is one of the best darn pumpkin pies I’ve ever had. I’m definitely making it again for Thanksgiving.

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Okay, I know you’re sick of being bombarded with pumpkin everything, but the fact is Thanksgiving is going to come around and you are going to need a pumpkin pie to serve. And the truth is, you want some for yourself too. By “you,” I mean me. Anyway, I came up with this recipe that is sweetened only with fruit and is one of the best darn pumpkin pies I’ve ever had. I’m definitely making it again for Thanksgiving. Here goes:

Combine the juice, vinegar, and ice in a liquid measuring cup with a spout.Set aside.
Place the flour, salt, ginger, and cinnamon in a food processor. Pulse to combine. Add the butter and pulse until a lumpy/sandy texture appears. Continue pulsing while slowly adding the cold juice & vinegar (don’t let the ice go in; it’s just there to keep the liquid cold!), just until the dough comes together. Form the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic, flatten slightly into a fat disc, and refrigerate to chill until nice and firm, an hour to a couple days. Clean and dry the food processor, as you’ll be needing it for the filling!

Once chilled, roll the dough out to a circle, 1/8″ thick. Place in your pie dish and crimp or cut as you wish. (Here’s a Martha Stewart video showing different crimping techniques.) Use a fork to poke holes through the bottom surface of the crust in order to avoid bubbles during baking. Chill the crust while you make the filling.

Pre-Bake the Shell & Make the Filling:

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Place parchment inside the chilled pie crust and add pie weights or beans. Bake the shell for 10 minutes, remove the weights and parchment, and give it a light egg wash. Put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes or until it just starts to get a light golden color.

Put the first 6 ingredients in the food processor and process until the freeze-dried or baked apple is a fine powder. Then add the dates and the vanilla and puree until the dates form a chunky paste. Then add the cream cheese and eggs and puree until very smooth. Add the pumpkin and process until combined. Pour the filling into the pre-baked shell and bake at 325°F for 30 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the filling no longer jiggles. Let cool to room temperature and serve with toasted pumpkin seeds and fresh whipped cream. If you don’t finish it all in one go, cover with plastic or foil and store in the fridge. Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Autumn!

No, it’s not a fruit, but early in my experimentation with eliminating cane sugar from recipes, I discovered that I’d need something other than fruit to help take on the structural role that refined cane sugar (sucrose) plays in dessert recipes, especially for cakes and cookies.

Organic Nonfat Dry Milk Powder

I found a helpful friend in nonfat dry milk powder, which instantly became a staple of the Fruitcake kitchen. Nonfat dry milk powder (NFDM) consists mostly of protein and sugar. Like fresh milk, its sweetness comes from lactose, which is much less sweet-tasting than cane sugar. Its flavor is definitely milky with a hint of something extra–caramel? nutiness, as in a brown butter? It’s a cozy, sweet flavor you’ll recognize if you ever drank Carnation Instant Breakfast or ate Astronaut Ice Cream.

There’s a long history of drying out milk in order to extend its consumable life. In the 13th century, Marco Polo noted that sun-dried skimmed milk was carried by Mongolian soldiers. The predominant drying method nowadays is spray drying, which consists of a few key steps: Fresh milk is skimmed and preheated, then a major part of the water in it is evaporated off by boiling in a vacuum (which means the boiling temperature is much lower than it is with normal air pressure). The concentrated milk is then sprayed as tiny droplets into hot air, which quickly dried them so that by the time they land, they are forming a pile of fine, dry powder.

NFDM has served me well in surprising ways. When sweetening with fruit, the challenge lies largely in avoiding the addition of a ton of water to a recipe. So finding natural, organic products that have already had most of their water content eliminated is extremely helpful. Dried and freeze-dried fruits fall into this category, and I’ve found them very useful, but they mess terribly with the structure of, say, a cake. I’m not a chemist, but I believe it’s the high protein content in NFDM (versus the high fiber content of dried fruit, which lends itself to chewiness) that gives strength and stability to back to a recipe from which cane sugar has been eliminated. As scientific as all of this sounds, let’s not forget that NFDM brings along with it that wonderful sweet, nutty, milky flavor mentioned above. In addition to cakes and cookies, milk powder’s flavor and texture of course work beautifully in dairy desserts like custards, ice creams, and cheesecakes, adding a sweetness that enhances their dairy flavor rather than overpowering it.